Evan Hunter: The Chisholms: A novel of the journey West

They had put out whiskey and cakes, as was the custom, and had left the cabin door wide for mourners to come and go with their condolences. By a quarter past eleven, half a dozen of the men were drunk. The women sipped more politely, but the whiskey loosened their tongues as well, and their chatter in the cabin mingled with the laughter and the loud voices and the keening of the wind outside.

It was a blustery day, for all the sky’s brightness. In April, there was early morning fog here in the mountains, but it generally burned off an hour by sun; Hadley Chisholm had watched it from the cabin window, tearing away in tatters that drifted down the valley. By the bottomlands, there were cowslips in bloom. This was springtime. You didn’t think of dying and burying when the land was turning green all around you. But they had put Hadley’s mother to rest this morning in a rock-lined grave. He had knelt beside the open grave afterward. Reached down. Picked up a handful of earth. The soil was parched and pebbly. He let it trickle through his fingers onto the pine coffin below.

Benjamin Lowery was coming across the cabin toward him. He was carrying a pewter cup in his hand, drinking whiskey from it as he navigated his way past the table in the center of the room, weaving, stumbling into a split-bottomed chair. He giggled, caught the chair before it fell to the floor, and then reeled to where Hadley was standing by the fireplace. Throwing an arm around him, he said very seriously, “Hadley, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Hadley said.

“Hadley, I’m worried about you.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You’re not drinking, Hadley. At a time like this, Hadley, a man’s mother passes away, it’s fitting for him to have a drop. Hadley, let me get you some whiskey.”

“Ben, you needn’t bother. I’m just fine.”

“Fine then,” Lowery said, and nodded, and then caught at Hadley for support. “Hadley,” he said, “what did you think of the new preacher?”

“I’ll tell you plain,” Hadley said.

“Yes, tell me.”

“He had no right talking of her like he’d known her.”

“Didn’t know her,” Lowery said.

“Didn’t know her a damn. Put together bits and pieces of her life, is what he done. Got it from neighbors along the ridges.”

“Is just what he done,” Lowery said, and suddenly sat on the puncheon bench against the fireplace wall. The cup fell from his hand. In an instant, he was asleep. Across the room, a cluster of men laughed at a joke the farmer Henry Soames had just told. Hadley longed for a drink. Thinking of the preacher had got him mad all over again, and a bit of corn liquor would... but no, he could not afford to get drunk. He had not yet told the family of his decision, and he didn’t want it spewing out in a cloud of alcohol fumes. He quenched his thirst with anger instead, thinking again of the damn fool preacher talking about his mother like she’d never had no more life in her than a rag doll.

Had all the facts, oh yes, dug them all up and recited them like his alphabet: A is for Antrim, the county whence Eva Chisholm had come in the year 1768, the bride of young William Allyn Chisholm. B is for Boston Harbor, to which Eva’s first son had fled two months after Hadley was born. C is for Chickasaw, who had slain Hadley’s father when Hadley was but fifteen; wonder the fool preacher hadn’t mentioned that William Allyn was drunk at the time and that he and the Indian had been fighting over a black wench on the Bailey plantation.

“Loved that woman like she was my own mother,” Minerva said. “Wasn’t a day went by she didn’t tell me how beautiful I was. Which I’m not, but it was nice her saying so.”

Ah, but you are, Hadley thought, and looked at his wife where she stood with the other women, and thought of that heart-stopping moment when first he laid eyes on her. He’d been over to Cedar Creek to deliver some whiskey, saw her walking a cow along the road, big stick in her hand, humming as she ambled along. Bright summer day, hair as golden as the sunshine. Dust rising on the road. Barefooted, she was.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s a little girl like you doing with such a big cow?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” she said.

“Well, I don’t rightly know,” Hadley said, and smiled.

“Anyways, I ain’t little.”

Nor was she. Tallest girl he ever did see; top of her head came almost level with his eyes. Blondest damn hair, sun glinting on it. In the tall grass, flies buzzing.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen,” she said.

“You want some whiskey?”

“Nope.”

“Made it myself.”

“So who don’t?” she said, shrugging.

“Never saw nobody with eyes so green,” Hadley said.

“Well, you’re seeing somebody now.”

“That I am,” he said. “Want me to come visitin sometime?”

“Nope.”

“Want to kiss me?”

“Hah!” Minerva snorted.

Hadley smiled with the memory. He would tell her his decision later, when all the well-wishers had gone home. Tell her and the family. He did not know what to expect from any of them. He went to Minerva and put his arm around her waist. She was in the middle of a sentence; she acknowledged his presence with a brief nod.

“... said he was going to marry me. Well, Eva looked me up and down, head to toe, sitting in that rocker right there near the fire, didn’t say a word for the longest time. Then she said, ‘You’re Ian Campbell’s daughter, are ye not?’ I admitted as I was....”

Wore her hair long then, Hadley remembered, curled like a shell at the back of her neck. Hands folded in her lap, she’d nodded to his mother and said, “I’m Ian Campbell’s daughter, yes, ma’am.”

“Your father’s a scoundrel,” Eva said.

“I love him,” Minerva said.

“Aye, as a good daughter should,” Eva said. “Which makes him no less a scoundrel.” Eva smiled suddenly. “But that’s not to say I find his daughter disagreeable.”

Minerva was twenty by then. She’d returned Eva’s smile and the women had reached across to clasp hands as if they were helping each other to ford a stream. As she related the story now, tears formed in her eyes. Standing close beside her was Millie Bain, who lived not half a mile away on the ridge. She immediately put her arm around Minerva and patted her shoulder.

“Touches me every time I think of it,” Minerva said.

“Ain’t no sin to weep,” Millie said. “Thirty-some-odd years ago, and I can still remember it plain.”

“What about the time with the hoop snake?” Millie said, and laughed. She was four or five years younger than Minerva, forty-eight or — nine, Hadley didn’t know which. A short chubby woman with a dumpling face and merry blue eyes, the closest friend Minerva had in all the world. It was she had helped to deliver their first son, a breech birth it had been, Millie and Eva both struggling to bring the baby into the world. He’d been named William Allyn Chisholm in memory of the soft-spoken man who’d been Hadley’s father.

“You tell one more time about that hoop snake...” Hadley warned.

“Oh, just cause you know all about snakes,” Millie said, and laughing, shushed Hadley with one plump little hand. “It was when you was carrying Bobbo, do you recall?” she said.

“Here comes the damn hoop snake,” Hadley said, and rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Hush,” Millie said. “And we was walkin in the woods with Eva and little Gideon beside us in his pinafore. He musta been six or seven years old—”